How Much of Fletcher’s Failures is Hextall’s Fault?

Chuck Fletcher has been removed as president of operations and as general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers. You will be hard pressed to find a teary fan of the Flyers about this. Fans (including me) were calling for his head last year after failing to sign any good free agents and failing to improve the team; save for the hiring of John Tortorella as new coach.

His drafts have been suspect, at best, he has made questionable signings and deals (or lack of them), and has shown so much incompetence, that some have suggested that even a baby or monkey could do a better job. And while I think Danny Briere will be fine, I gotta agree that a monkey could do just as well as Fletcher has the last few seasons.

However, if we can take our fandom and our emotions out of the equation, there is probably a lot more to the story. For example, rumors swirled a lot last year about Fletcher trying to move James van Riemsdyk but was met with scorn by other GMs. The only way they’d have taken him as salary cap relieve would be if we coughed up a first rounder or more; in a haunting repeat of the Gostisbehere trade. His hands were tied because of his incompetence.

But that’s not all that tied his hands. His predecessor, Ron Hextall, has a lot to do with the state of the Flyers right now. While Hexy, the general manager from May 2014 to December 2018, was a bit bolder in his moves, a lot of them have seriously hampered this team. Let’s take a look at what Hextall has done to this team.

First of all, Hextall was following in the legacy of his predecessors Paul Holmgren and Bobby Clarke. Both were known for doling out big contracts and putting this team so dangerously close to the salary cap as possible (Andrew MacDonald anyone?). Hextall did the same and Fletcher followed that. But when he came here, he came with a good pedigree as assistant GM in Los Angeles, which had just won two Stanley Cups. Surely he could do that here, right?

Draft Selections

Hexy’s first two drafts were promising. In 2014 he drafted Travis Sanheim in the first round, Nicolas Aube-Kubel in the second, and Oskar Lindblom in the fourth. The following year, the Flyers had two first rounders. Those were spent on Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny. Outside of that, the rest of the draft has had little impact on the team.

The 2016 NHL draft is when things took a turn. First round pick German Rubtsov never played in Philly. Carter Hart, a second rounder has been a great selection but the other second rounder, Pascal Laberge, has been a bust. Other picks from that draft include Wade Allison, Carsen Twarynski, Connor Bunnaman, and Tanner Laczynski. Rubtsov and Bunnaman were traded with Claude Giroux to Florida and Twarnski was selected by Seattle in the expansion draft.

2017 saw the Flyers pick Nolan Patrick with the second overall pick. This was despite objections by others that they should’ve selected Cale Makar instead. Morgan Frost was taken with the second first round pick. Isaac Ratcliffe, recently traded for “future considerations”, was the second round pick. Interestingly enough, the best pick of that draft was fifth rounder Noah Cates. When your best pick is a fifth rounder, that’s probably not a good sign.

In what would end up being his last draft, 2018, the Flyers again had two draft picks. Joel Farabee and Jay O’Brien were both selected in the first round. While Farabee has shown promise, outside of this season, O’Brien has been a huge bust. The other picks from this draft, save for fifth rounder Samuel Ersson, have been busts as well.

Hextall tied his fortunes to Hakstol. When that blew up in his face, he was gone. He, like Holmgren before him, tied the fortunes of the team to signing some of the stars to long term contracts. But by giving them big and bloated contracts, it would hamper the teams for years to come; the effects of that we are still dealing with five years later.

The drafts, while starting off well, became disastrous. Patrick was always injured. O’Brien never got better. Frost is struggling and Farabee is regressing. Sanheim and Provy, while good, aren’t great. Only Konency has really paid off. The rest of the picks, the picks you count on for depth, have not been reliable.

Yes, Fletcher has been epically bad for this team. In Hextall’s four full years as general manager, the team made the playoffs twice, only to be bounced out in the first round. Since then, the team has only been to the playoffs during the Covid Bubble.

Fletcher has been a terrible general manager. I would argue that he was the worst in this team’s history. However, it hasn’t been all his fault. Many of the contracts signed by Hextall, with a few from Holmgren’s tenure, hampered what this team could do in acquiring players. To be fair, Fletcher did continue this by offering huge deals to players like Ramsus Ristolainen. But it does say something that the last “big” free agent signing by the Flyers, before JVR was Radko Gudas. Yikes. Every year we hoped to see a piece that would be added to the team that would put us over the edge. Every year, we were disappointed. Every year became “next year” as in “Next year will be our year.”

It’s going to take years to undo all the damage that has been done to this franchise over the last 10 years. It will be hard to attract a big name free agent when the team has no money. It will be hard to improve when the minor league system is devoid of many good prospects in the pipeline. We are headed for some dark times ahead. But getting rid of Fletcher is the first part of fixing this. Let’s hope Briere is up to the task.